Johnson & Johnson and a subsidiary of HP Inc. are teaming up to provide personalized health care solutions for patients, with 3-D printing. The goal is to create customized products that will improve outcomes and reduce costs for patients.

The collaboration, which has already begun, is focusing immediately on “personalization of instrumentation and software for patient-specific health care devices,” according to Johnson & Johnson. But it is anticipated that the 3-D technology will also eventually lead to innovations in uses for orthopedics, eye health and consumer products.

“The intersection of technology and health care is spurring innovation that will have a profound impact on patients and consumers all over the world,” Sandra Peterson, Group Worldwide Chairman, Johnson & Johnson, said in a prepared statement.
“Combined with advances in data mining and software, 3-D printing could enable distributed manufacturing models and patient-specific products, therapies and solutions that deliver better outcomes, better economics and reduce costs across the health continuum,” she added.

Stephen Nigro, president of HP’s 3-D printing business, said the advances in 3-D printing technology have “the potential to break historical paradigms of health care delivery in ways that are not feasible in traditional manufacturing processes.”

“Together with Johnson & Johnson we have the potential to create opportunities and innovations in health care to improve patients’ lives, that neither company could develop alone,” Nigro added.

The Johnson & Johnson collaboration was announced by HP as part of its introduction of the HP Jet Fusion 3-D Printing Solution, the world’s first production-ready commercial 3-D printing system, to the market. The company said it “revolutionizes design, prototyping and manufacturing” and does so 10 times faster and at half the cost of current 3-D print systems.

HP said in a news release that it had also collaborated with industry-leading software partners to make the design-to-print process easier and more intuitive, including Autodesk, Materialise and Siemens. In addition to Johnson & Johnson, other companies HP said it was working with are Nike and BMW.

The HP announcement is the “biggest 3-D printing news of the week, year and possibly decade,” according to engineering.com. “While the exact impact of the company’s Multi Jet Fusion (MJF) technology is still a huge unknown, it is unique, to say the least, and potentially a game changer, to say the most.”

“As one of the largest pharmaceutical and medical device manufactures in the world, the products that Johnson & Johnson develops will be made available in more than 175 different countries all over the globe," according to 3Dprint.com. "So when they decide to develop ways to integrate 3-D printing technology into their business, it isn’t just their own company that will be changed, but as their competitors try to keep up with them, their entire industry will change,” the article stated.

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